The disposal of ash in a thermal plant through the slurry pipe is
subjected to some erosion wear due to the abrasive characteristics of
the slurry. A simulation study of particle-liquid erosion of mild steel
pipe wall based on CFD-FLUENT that considers the solid-liquid,
solid-solid and solid-wall interaction is presented in this work. The
multi-phase Euler-Lagrange model with standard k-epsilon turbulence
modeling is adopted to predict the particulate erosion wear caused by
the flow of bottom ash-water suspension. Erosion rate for different
particle size and concentration is evaluated at variable flow rate. It
is observed that the pressure drop and erosion rate share direct
relationships with flow velocity, particle size and concentration. The
flow velocity is found to be the most influencing parameter. A model
capable of predicting the erosion wear at variable operating conditions
is presented. The simulation findings show good agreement with the
published findings.